Category: Middle East

The missile that Iran recently test had some believing they may have tested North Korea’s Musudan missile.  According to one expert the test by Iran was not a Musudan they have had one successful flight test of, but likely an equivalent of North Korea’s No Dong missile that North Korea has a long history of successful flight tests with:

Chances are low that the ballistic missile recently test-fired by Iran could have been North Korea’s Musudan intermediate range ballistic missile, a defense expert said.

Iran launched the missile on Jan. 29, which flew about 1,000 kilometers. Media reports have since surfaced suggesting that the missile could be the same as North Korea’s Musudan missile, which, if confirmed, would mean missile cooperation between the two countries is still ongoing.

But Michael Elleman, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an article carried by the website 38 North that there is little possibility that the Iranians have tested the Musudan.

“If the Iranian missile were modeled on the 3,000 kilometer-range Musudan, it would be an intermediate-range ballistic missile, contrary to the U.S. description of the Khorramshahr as a medium-range ballistic missile,” Elleman said.

While the July 2016 and January 2017 test flights conducted by Iran were largely successful, North Korea’s tests of the Musudan failed soon after launch in six of eight attempts, a wide discrepancy that is difficult to explain even if Iran is more capable at missile development, he said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

I share the below story about Saddam Hussein because it makes me wonder how much we really know about Kim Jong-un?  Every week it seems there is some new sensational report about Kim Jong-un sourced to some anonymous defector account much like with Saddam Hussein.  How accurate are these accounts?  I have speculated before that I don’t think Kim Jong-un is as all powerful as believed.  I believe he instead rules with the consensus of a regime inner circle which it appears that Saddam had largely handed off power to in his country before the war 2003:

Saddam Hussein was an inept dictator during his final years in charge, thought 9/11 would bring Iraq and America closer together and took partial blame for his eventual fall from power after the 2003 US-led invasion, according to a new book by one of the men who interrogated the ex-Iraqi president.

The revelations are contained in the upcoming John Nixon book “Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein.” Nixon was a CIA analyst in Iraq who had been assigned the task of finding Saddam and then getting information out of him. But he quickly found that “Saddam seemed clueless.”

“He was inattentive to what his government was doing, had no real plan for the defense of Iraq and could not comprehend the immensity of the approaching storm,” Nixon wrote in the book excerpt published by The Daily Mail.

Saddam, who was hanged in 2006 for crimes against humanity, was frequently defiant while being interviewed and even mocked the US rationale for the war: that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

“You found a traitor who led you to Saddam Hussein. Isn’t there one traitor who can tell you where the WMDs are?” Hussein said shortly after he was found hiding, dirty and grizzled, inside an underground “spider hole” on Dec. 13, 2003.

The sadistic despot said Iraq had never thought about using WMDs and questioned why “anyone with full faculties” would deploy chemical weapons unprovoked.  [New York Post]

You can read more at the link.

When dealing with the Middle East actions speak louder than words and so far there has been no action on Iran’s part to support their recent rhetoric:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani suggested Monday that his country is opposed to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, a move that underscores growing pressure on the communist country.

“We cheer for peace on the Korean Peninsula and we are, in principle, opposed to any nuclear development,” Rouhani said through a translator in a joint news conference with South Korean President Park Geun-hye after their summit in Tehran.

“Our basic position is that nuclear weapons should be removed from the Korean Peninsula and the Middle East.”

Rouhani’s comments are the latest act of international pressure being exerted on North Korea to give up its nuclear program and end its provocations.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

https://twitter.com/Max_Fisher/status/621019725464739840

https://twitter.com/freekorea_us/status/615834727929499648

I wonder if the Iranians were using this shipment as a way to test US willingness to strike a deal?

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, right, welcomes North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, for a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014

North Korea supplied several shipments of missile components to Iran during recent nuclear talks and the transfers appear to violate United Nations sanctions on both countries, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Since September more than two shipments of missile parts have been monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies as they transited from North Korea to Iran, said officials familiar with intelligence reports who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Details of the arms shipments were included in President Obama’s daily intelligence briefings and officials suggested information about the transfers was kept secret from the United Nations, which is in charge of monitoring sanctions violations.

Critics of the U.S.-led nuclear framework agreement reached in Switzerland earlier this month have said one major deficiency of the accord is its failure to address Iran’s missile program, considered a key nuclear delivery system for the Islamist regime.  [The Washington Free Beachon]

You can read the rest at the link, but if the Iranians saw that the US was allowing this ship to travel to Iran unmolested then that may have been a sign to the regime that the US was eager to cut a deal and overlook obvious sanctions violations. Anyone else have any other theories on the timing of this shipment?

I hope this deal works out, but considering North Korea is one of Iran’s best friends they would be well versed how to maintain a secret nuclear program and then back out of deal by blaming the other side:

Even two of the most skeptical experts on the negotiations — Gary Samore and Olli Heinonen of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and members of a group call United Against Nuclear Iran — said they were impressed with the depth of detail.

Mr. Samore, who was Mr. Obama’s top adviser on weapons of mass destruction in his first term as president, said in an email that there is “much detail to be negotiated but I think it’s enough to be called a political framework.” Just a day ago, that appeared in doubt.

Mr. Heinonen, the former chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said “it appears to be a fairly comprehensive deal with most important parameters.” But he cautioned that “Iran maintains enrichment capacity, which will be beyond its near-term needs.”

According to European officials, roughly 5,000 centrifuges will remain spinning enriched uranium at the main nuclear site at Natanz, about half the number currently running. The giant underground enrichment site at Fordo — which Israeli and some American officials fear is impervious to bombing — will be partly converted to advanced nuclear research and the production of medical isotopes. Foreign scientists will be present. There will be no fissile material present that could be used to make a bomb.

A major reactor at Arak, which officials feared could produce plutonium, would operate on a limited basis that would not provide enough fuel for a bomb.

In return, the European Union and the United States would begin to lift sanctions, as Iran complied. At a news conference after the announcement, Mr. Zarif said that essentially all sanctions would be lifted after the final agreement is signed.  [New York Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but North Korea first started negotiating in regards to their nuclear program back in 1994.  Now 21 years later they have nuclear weapons.  The Iranians if they choose to follow the same path will probably have nuclear weapons even sooner than that.  I think a lot of the decision on whether to covertly build nukes will depend on the geopolitical situation in the Middle East in the coming years.  Despite the media reports I think Iran wants nuclear weapons more for regime survival than to attack Israel with.  In the coming years if Iran feels like they are getting surrounded by hostile ISIS affiliates and Sunni governments they may then feel compelled to move forward with a covert nuclear weapons program.  This deal will allow them to keep that possibility open in the long term while still complying with the agreement to get sanctions dropped in the near term.

Considering North Korea’s long defense relationship with Syria to include trying to make them a nuclear reactor, it only makes sense that ISIS would have captured plenty of North Korean manufactured weaponry:

The terror group ISIS that is effectively in charge of vast swathes of Syria and Iraq is using North Korean-made tanks and portable missiles, the website NK News claimed Monday.

It cited intelligence sources as claiming tanks used by ISIS in an attack on a Kurdish region in northern Iraq in September were Soviet T-55 tanks upgraded in North Korea, and portable missiles used by militants are of a type manufactured in the North.

Earlier, German intelligence told lawmakers that ISIS has portable surface-to-air missiles that are capable of shooting down civilian aircraft. A photo of an ISIS militant brandishing the weapon was posted on Twitter.

At the time, German intelligence believed the weapon was Russian, Bulgarian or Chinese in origin.

But NK News said ISIS got its hands on North Korean-made weapons by capturing them from government forces in Syria. The two countries maintained close ties since the 1970s and the North exported various weapons to Syria, including the upgraded T-55 tanks and portable surface-to-air missiles.  [Chosun Ilbo]

The original NK News article for those that have a subscription can be read at this link.

The South Korean government plans to support President Obama’s ISIS strategy with humanitarian assistance aid:

South Korea expressed support Thursday for U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan for airstrikes in Syria and expanded strikes in Iraq to defeat the Islamic State militant group.

Obama said Wednesday he won’t hesitate to take action against the Islamic State in Syria, as he pledged to “degrade, and ultimately destroy” the extremists responsible for beheading two American journalists.

“South Korea voices its support to the efforts by the international community to defeat the Islamic State militant group,” Noh Kwang-il, spokesman for Seoul’s foreign ministry, told a regular press briefing. “As part of such support, Seoul has already announced its plan to provide a combined US$1.2 million in aid (to displaced Iraqi people).”

South Korea said in June and August that it plans to offer $200,000 in humanitarian assistance and an additional $1 million to help Iraqi refugees amid escalating violence in the country.  [Yonhap]

Isn’t amazing that just a year ago the US wanted to bomb the Syrian government and now the US is planning to become the Syrian government’s Air Force.  You can read more about the new ISIS strategy at this Yahoo News link, but here is another example of how so many things have flipped in such a short period of time:

Before the speech, senior administration officials cited the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force as the legal basis for taking the fight to Syria. Strikingly, a little over a year ago, in a major counterterrorism address at the National Defense University in Washington, Obama said he wanted to “refine and ultimately repeal” the AUMF, which President George W. Bush had relied on for his Global War on Terror.